Pathetic Fallacy

Around seven years old, I was sent on the weekends to various schools around Beijing to learn to converse and write in English without embarrassment. It was the habit for teachers to begin class with a declaration that learning a new tongue meant bestowing oneself with a new name. Then they’d retreat for a few minutes while we ransacked our imaginations—yet I knew that I needed time, years maybe, to decide. No freedom more formless and horrifying than the promise of endless transmutation: names from Austen and Brontë novels felt too pat, and emblems of Greek or Roman mythologies seemed totalizing, extravagant. If feeling humble, to name oneself after flowers was the fashion—Daisy, Lily, Eugenia. Seven times I changed my mind—Diana, Cynthia, Eirene. I kept a notebook devoted to taking apart and reconstituting syllables. Voluptuous, unblemished vowels that glistened under the moon; bastardizations, which rang of such fine melancholy. I could have been warned that I would grow up to regret my choices anyway, but even “regret,” when said enough times, sounded pretty enough.